I don't blame him. We've seen what Koetter is capable of, Mike Smith has been watering down Dirks great offense more and more as the games go. Aye.

You think Koetter is leaving because of Smitty?

That would be interesting.

I'm really not sure man. I know it seems like a stretch, but you know, we've seen games where we see strikes of absolute freaking genius from both our coordinators with the schemes they throw at opposing teams. Then when we get a big lead, all of a sudden we go to a flat/bland offense and defense almost to what seems like a "lets just play safe and leave no room for turnovers and mistakes" game. The same thing happened at times with Mularky and BVG. Although, I wasn't really impressed with them to begin with, but the point still stands I guess. I mean this notion seems even kind of ridiculous in my head but the more and more I look at it, the more I begin to wonder if it could be the case.

Don't take me wrong either, I am not and would never bash the success Mike Smith has had. He's had such a great influence on the Atlanta Falcons since he has shown up, but at some point you need to point fingers at the main orchestrator and really examine the reasons we have lost big games and failed to keep the big play rolling throughout the 2nd half of games.

I really hope Koetter doesn't leave. I mean, look at the pool, who is out there to replace him?

Koetter tries too hard to force Matt to throw deep almost every play. When we play the short game Ryan does great and we move the ball. Instead the line can't block well enough and Ryan gets destroyed. Koetter is Mike Martz light. Last year was the only year in his NFL career that he piloted a decent offense. He has made no adjustments to compensate for the injuries. Its like we rely on the one or two big plays to win.

It does make me wonder. There are two traits I can think of right off the top of my head that have remained since Mularkey left. The first is stubbornness. How many times have we seen creative brilliance followed by a healthy dose of bland. Yet it continues. Also, Antone Smith (I'm gonna keep harping on that goddammit).

Put simply, stubbornness is the greatest inhibitor of creativity, which could actually explain a lot.

The second thing is the lack of effective adjustments (I say effective because surely they adjust but just don't do it well. If they don't adjust at all then, holy shit).

Is this Smith or is this coincidence? I'm not certain, but it would seem that he would have to be a huge part of it. It's not like he's telling the coordinators to do one thing then they just say fuck off and do what they feel like.

Koetter tries too hard to force Matt to throw deep almost every play. When we play the short game Ryan does great and we move the ball. Instead the line can't block well enough and Ryan gets destroyed. Koetter is Mike Martz light. Last year was the only year in his NFL career that he piloted a decent offense. He has made no adjustments to compensate for the injuries. Its like we rely on the one or two big plays to win.

That's how his offense works, though. The one concern I had when he came here was he was very much like Mike Martz in approach, in that you can't max protect and run his scheme. Since we can't protect with 5 guys, he's hamstrung as to what he can do with his system, and we end up running a lot of plays that harken back to the 1970s Coryell offenses. Great plays -- Norv Turner won a lot of Super Bowls with them when he coached the Cowboys -- but it's very old school, conservative. Add to that the fact that we can't run the ball, and I can't figure out what people expect of him. The Cowboys with our o-line and without Emmit Smith would not have won very many games.

I'd love to have Kubiak, because I think Ryan is best suited for a WCO-based system, and Kubiak loves zone blocking schemes and he'll still throw down the field. But I don't have a problem with Koetter, and frankly it baffles me why so many do. He's doing the best he can with what he has to work with. And it's not his fault his system isn't designed to have a crappy o-line as the centerpiece. We knew that when we hired him.

Dallas in the 90's had such a great offense. They had 5 monsters to block which cleared and blocked everything...sure they were all high but whatever. Jimmy Johnson set it up as the same handful of plays run out of different formations. All they did was execute and win.